Letter: Amarillo needs public storm shelters

Posted: May 24, 2013 - 7:48pm

It was very interesting to read in the newspaper about the city preparing for a disaster similar to the tornado that struck Moore, Okla. (Are Amarillo emergency groups prepared for a tornado disaster?, May 21, amarillo.com).

I am proud of our city for doing this, and was told the schools were running through emergency drills.

However, a few days ago I read where the city is wanting to spend $21,500 ... for a parking lot survey. A parking lot survey?

Since the city does not have public shelters, according to our emergency management coordinator for the Amarillo/Potter/Randall Office of Emergency Management, wouldn’t it be more feasible to have storm shelters built in different areas of town so Amarillo residents can find refuge from a storm?

We’ve all seen how safe the bathroom and hallway are — the EF-5 tornado in Oklahoma made matchsticks out of even brick homes.

Please think about priorities here — people or parking places.

A list of churches and businesses with basements which are willing to open their places for the public’s safety would be nice. I lived in Kansas back in the 1970s, and everyone knew which church would open its doors and welcome anyone who came during storms. It was fun meeting our neighbors in storm shelters during bad weather — it made us a real community.

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The city should levy a storm shelter tax on every building inside the city limits that doesn't have a storm shelter. Use those funds to build public storm shelters. That way, the retailers in Amarillo can pass those fees on to the consumers much like Greg Mitchell does with the gas prices. Did anyone ever think that maybe the gas prices at TNT are higher simply because that company is passing those drainage and runoff taxes on to the public? Maybe it's not just TNT but all gas retailers in town following their lead. Ya think?

Linda, I was also reared in Kansas, and not only did the high schools have basements, they also had tunnels that were set up with cold war bomb shelters in them. These shelters were also stocked with barrels and barrels of drinking water, cases and cases of crackers, and cases and cases of military style ready to eat meals.

Most of the area churches had basements as well as some of the home owners had their own personal storm shelters.

There are a lot of the pet owners that feel that their pets are more than pets, they feel like are their children. One of the major issues with public storm shelters is when one of the pet owners introduces their pet into the equation, things do not always go as planned. That being said, personal storm shelters are the best idea.

There are a lot of people, particularly elderly people, who have a little dog or cat that is their only family. There are also a lot of us who would not leave our animals to die without trying to save them. If pet owners have portable pet crates there is no problem with an animal being brought to a public shelter. Maybe somethng we should add to the list of things to have ready in the case of a storm. What is keeping a lot of folks in Oklahoma from falling apart right now is finding their pets that were lost in the storm.

James Madison, "Father of the Constitution" and chief author (1794): ""I cannot undertake to lay my finger on that article of the Constitution which granted a right to Congress of expending, on objects of benevolence, the money of their constituents."

Part of the original Eisenhower Interstate Highway System design was to include public storm/fallout shelters as part of every overpass/underpass abutment and bridge abutment in the Interstate system. Some of the first miles of the Interstate system were designed with this in mind, and a few of the bunkers may still exist.

But due to the mistaken and (in some peoples' view) traitorous machinations of Robert McNamara and his fellow democrats who came up with the idiotic idea of "Mutually Assured Destruction" (MAD) as a deterrent to the Soviet Union's nuclear arsenal, the US unilaterally decided to forego protecting its public against severe weather and a possible nuclear attack. So the plans for constructing fallout/storm shelters in bridge and over/underpass abutments on the Interstate Highway system were shelved permanently. It's quite interesting that the Soviet Union never bought into the idea of not protecting at least some of the public, for most of their subway system stations in their major cities are well-constructed bomb/fallout shelters, according to visitors to those cities.